Texas A&M Men’s Tennis Sweeps Twin-Bill With 6-1 Victories

COLLEGE STATION, Texas – The Texas A&M men’s tennis team improved to 4-0 on the young season with victories over UTSA and Lamar at the George P. Mitchell Tennis Center on Saturday afternoon. The Aggies failed to claim the doubles point against the Roadrunners but won all 12 sets in singles on their way to the 6-1 victory.

“Starting with the doubles against UTSA, we put ourselves behind the eight ball which forced us to deal with some adversity for the first time this season and I felt like our guys responded well to that,” A&M head coach Steve Denton said. “Both matches were really competitive today and I liked the way our guys took care of business.”

The sophomore tandem of Harrison Adams and Shane Vinsant improved to 4-0 on the young season with two victories at the No. 1 line on Saturday. The pair downed Yannick Junger and Diogo Casa, 6-0, in the first match against UTSA and later ousted the duo of Nikita Lis and Steven McMullan, 6-2, of Lamar. Last season, both Adams and Vinsant were named to the All-SEC Freshmen team during their first season in Aggieland.

Junior Jeremy Efferding bolstered his early-season resume by improving to 4-0 in singles. The nation’s 13th-ranked player defeated UTSA’s Junger, 6-1, 6-1, at the No. 2 singles position before besting Michael Feucht, 6-3, 6-2, of Lamar at the top line.

“Jeremy is becoming one of the real stalwarts for this team after he picked his game up moving from the No. 4 line to the No. 1 position for us,” Denton said on his top-singles player. “He is really starting to enforce his will in these matches and he is learning that every point is really valuable.”

Freshman Max Lunkin continues to impress early in his Aggie career by starting the season 3-0 after arriving in Aggieland in early January. The Russian downed Eric Buchalter, 6-4, 6-1, at the No. 5 line to give the Aggies a 5-1 lead against the Roadrunners. Later in the afternoon, Lunkin showed tremendous poise as he rallied through two tiebreaking points to secure the 5-6 (10), 6-0, 1-0 (8), victory at the No. 4 line.

“It was good for Max to face a couple tough opponents in a new environment and get two quality matches under his belt,” Denton said on his Russian freshman. “This competition will go a long way to help him with his confidence and get him acclimated to this new format. I was pleased with how he responded after being down 5-1 in the first set against Lamar, he really came back and competed there when a lot of guys would go away after a disappointing first set.”

Texas A&M will be back in action again next Sunday, Feb. 2, as it welcomes SMU and Nicholls State to the Mitchell Tennis Center at noon and 4 p.m., respectively. To learn more about the men’s tennis team, visit AggieAthletics.com and follow @AggieMTEN on Twitter.